Mage Class Changes in Cataclysm!

Hold onto your hats, because they've dropped some (living?) bombs on us this time. It looks like mages are getting...Bloodlust?

Come read the full rundown after the break!

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you’ll get an early look at what's in store for the mage class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

New Mage Spells

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn'kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage's own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to introducing new spells, we're planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior’s Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels.

We are planning to remove spells that don't have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more.

The ability to conjure food and water will not become available until higher levels (likely around level 40), as we're making changes to ensure mages generally won’t run out of mana at lower levels. Once mages learn how to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana.

Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage's fire spells. Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage's rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability, even if someone else is supplying the group with the spell Critical Strike debuff. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be improved through talents.

New Talents and Talent Changes

Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana.

The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect.

Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells.

The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

ArcaneSpell damage Spell Haste Mana Adept

FireSpell damage Spell Crit Ignite

FrostSpell damage Spell Crit damage Deathfrost

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger.

Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won't be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we’re looking forward to hearing your initial thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

Flame Orb is not channeled. It may have a cast time, but after that is fire and forget. We want to try the line idea because there aren’t any spells that work that way currently. Giving it a target to follow makes it feel more like a fancy dot – useful perhaps, but nothing that feels really new. It will be balanced for single-target damage, but if you can launch it in such a way that it will hit multiple targets, then you’re just being awesome.

Wall of Fog is not channeled. We don’t know yet how wide it will be, but wide enough so that it feels more like a trip-wire than an area like Frost Trap.

We like the basic gameplay of Hot Streak. With lower crit rates all around, we hope that it will feel more like a bonus when it’s up rather than a penalty when it refuses to stay up. We may lower the magnitude overall for the same reason.

On Arcane Missiles, the basic spell is pretty cool. The problem is the way the spell works makes the current design hard to balance. It’s either too expensive and low damage or the opposite problem. This is particularly true at low level, and meanwhile we think the mage experience at low level is also a little too repetitive. The change is that you can’t hit Arcane Missiles whenever you want. The icon is just grayed out. However, when you deal damage, you have a chance to get Arcane Missiles to light up and then you definitely want to hit it. At higher levels Fire and Frost may eventually phase it out in preference for other spells, or if we like the mechanic, it may be something even Fire and Frost do, just less often than Arcane.

On the topic of mastery bonuses, understand that this is a new design for us and very few people have seen them in action yet. We run the risk of specific masteries being so generic that the mastery stat isn’t interesting or so complex that what players really like about playing a certain spec gets turned on its head. This is the kind of thing that will require a lot of iteration and the reason we’re trying to cover the whole gamut of relatively complex to relatively simple to see what feels right.

The reason behind Deathfrost (Frost mastery) isn’t to get Frost to spam Frostbolt more. It’s to get mages to spam Frostbolt less. If you hit nothing but Frostbolt, you’re wasting the Deathfrost bonus. We’re shifting food and water to higher level because we don’t want players to have so much down time at lower level. We’re not trying to make it harder to level; we’re reducing the need to drink or eat so we’re bumping the actual food and water (though it’s really foodwater in the case of mages) higher.

The intent behind Mana Adapt (Arcane mastery) is that Arcane currently has a pretty fun mana management game going, at least at relatively high level. We thought it would be fun to extend that concept even further to where Arcane mages that use the mechanics to keep their mana high would do higher dps. I find many of the predictions that Arcane is doomed in PvE based on the very limited information you have at the moment to be quite premature.

On Time Warp vs. Bloodlust, we are really trying to give groups flexibility in who they bring to 10 player raids to an even greater extent than we did in Lich King. We heard over and over that shaman still felt like the one mandatory class in any raid. The more we hear “now there will be no reason to take me over X class / spec” the happier we will be. The reason should be that you’re a good player, not that your mere presence makes everyone else perform better. It’s fun to feel more powerful in a group – we get that, and we aren’t going to completely marginalize group synergy. But it needs to come secondary to the skill of the players involved.

I understand some mages really like Fire Ward or Dampen Magic. Perhaps “no clear role” wasn’t the best choice of words, but we are trying to remove mechanics from the game that we think aren’t really cutting it. When asking players to put more buttons on their action bars from these new spells, we only think it’s fair to try and get some bar space back from the least interesting spells. Don’t worry so much about balance at this stage. Many things will need to be tweaked. Worry more about whether it ever felt like a fun decision to use these spells.

For everyone focusing on the RMP Arena comp, I really think you’re going to see a shift to more PvP concerns in Cataclysm being about Battleground balance. There will still be players playing Arenas for sure, but a lot of the players currently doing Arenas are going to shift to rated BGs instead.

Comments

Comment by DrewP367

Woo! Sounds like a ton-a-fun!Wall of Fog and Flame Orb sound very interesting for premadebg's. Which I know I'll be doing!

Comment by Bladestriker

on 2010-04-10T02:09:33-05:00

Let's do the Time Warp again!

Comment by Votix

on 2010-04-10T02:10:12-05:00

Heh, nice. I might level up my 50 mage now.

Comment by Dawnrider

on 2010-04-10T02:10:59-05:00

Woot! I called Time Warp.

Comment by Euronymous101

on 2010-04-10T02:13:27-05:00

will anything replace dampen and amplify magic?

Comment by Tarudizer

on 2010-04-10T02:14:06-05:00

nice changes. like the fog and time warp. some were... strange, like more haste when having dots on 3 or more targets... but the burnout thing was pure genious

Comment by FMKidsan

on 2010-04-10T02:14:48-05:00

I. Love. These. Changes.

- Flame Orb : Uh, hell yea.

- Time Warp : Bloodlust effect? AND movement speed bonus? Want.

- Wall of Fog : Not a PvP mage but this effect still kicks ass.

Love the mastery bonuses too. And the Burnout change. It's painful being stuck in long fights with no mana, and all mana regens on cooldown.

I'm wondering how Deathfrost will affect rotations though, and what will become of Frostfire Bolt. Maybe they tie in together?

But yeah, nice work Blizz. Can't wait to try this out =]

Comment by mohamad

on 2010-04-10T02:27:22-05:00

i hope the dont change the playing with fire talentand about burnout will it still have the current effect even after the change?

Comment by TheAshenVerdict

on 2010-04-10T02:33:28-05:00

<inappropriate>

and I jizzed in my pants.

</inappropriate>

I think the new arcane DPS mechanic is.. interesting.

If 100% mana is the current 100% DPS, it's literally the largest nerf to ever happen.If 100% mana is a boost to DPS (eg 150%) it's not necessarily a buff (because 30% mana could = 75% damage) but it makes the spec fun.

Comment by Achloryn

on 2010-04-10T02:41:20-05:00

Maybe i'm not understanding it completely (and i'm willing to wait and see), but Mana Adept seems like a horrible idea. Damage reduction as you spend mana? I don't see how that could be anything short of a gimp for raiding arcane mages. They're nerfing mana regen, they're nerfing replenishment, but they're going to penalize arcane mages for using more mana? Hardly seems right.

Comment by Elaus

on 2010-04-10T02:43:02-05:00

The Mana Adept thing has got to be the suckiest passive talent tree bonus out of them all? So we're going to be punished for not keeping our mana at high levels at all times?

Comment by TheAshenVerdict

on 2010-04-10T02:44:58-05:00

Note on mana adept:

If 100% mana is a boost to DPS (eg 150%) it's not necessarily a buff (because 30% mana could = 75% damage) but it makes the spec fun

It seems like this is what they are getting at.

note, MUCH MORE DAMAGE. he's not saying your base damage will be based off of 100% mana, rather at that point you will be doing much more than normal.

As quoted from the MMO-Champion forums.

I'm thinking that I won't be arcane from the get go in Cataclysm. The new Flame orb seems pretty fun, and frost has always been fun, and should be PvE ready. With the changes to AM and with Mana Adept perhaps it can be fun, but I think I want to try something else in light of these changes.

Comment by Achloryn

on 2010-04-10T02:50:49-05:00

Note on mana adept:

If 100% mana is a boost to DPS (eg 150%) it's not necessarily a buff (because 30% mana could = 75% damage) but it makes the spec fun

It seems like this is what they are getting at.

note, MUCH MORE DAMAGE. he's not saying your base damage will be based off of 100% mana, rather at that point you will be doing much more than normal.

As quoted from the MMO-Champion forums.

Ahh, I see. even if it's a 100% damage -increase- it seems like mages are going to be depending on that for the output they're looking for, especially in endgame content.

Comment by claad

on 2010-04-10T02:56:32-05:00

The Mana Adept thing has got to be the suckiest passive talent tree bonus out of them all? So we're going to be punished for not keeping our mana at high levels at all times?

It's prolly the other way around. We'll get higher damage when our mana is high, about 130% is my guess and what I think is that Blizz'll put in a cap on lowest damage, say 90%

Comment by Mgao

on 2010-04-10T02:58:00-05:00

Man.. was hoping for first comment. Oh well. Can't wait! I hope fire mages get buffed! It seems like they're talents are changing quite a bit. The ignite master talent sounds stupid and super underpowered though.. I hope blizzard knows what they're doing!

Comment by Elaus

on 2010-04-10T02:58:18-05:00

Note on mana adept:

If 100% mana is a boost to DPS (eg 150%) it's not necessarily a buff (because 30% mana could = 75% damage) but it makes the spec fun

It seems like this is what they are getting at.

note, MUCH MORE DAMAGE. he's not saying your base damage will be based off of 100% mana, rather at that point you will be doing much more than normal.

As quoted from the MMO-Champion forums.

Well if this was in the game right now it would still be crap. The point of arcane is to manage your mana, but you also have to know when you can afford to burn that extra mana. The only time you should be anywhere near 100% or even 75% is at the start of a fight and when you have just used evocation (which you want use as a last resort because the lost DPS time is just too great)

We'll have to wait for clarification on this.

I also don't get removing fire/frost ward and even dampen magic. They are very important spells especially in PvP. Why do they think they don't have a purpose?

And burnout using health instead of mana to cast spells when OOM? Unless you're letting a priest mana burn you, how the hell does fire run out of mana?

Comment by Denkou

on 2010-04-10T02:58:38-05:00

YES, DEAR GOD, YES.

I've been following these class updates for the past couple days, and out of all three classes that I primarily play (Warrior, Mage, and Druid), I have to say that I'm most pleased and excited with the info they just put out for Mages. Hell, even taking account all of the other classes they've revealed info for, I think Mages have gotten the most love so far. Flame Orb will add a bit of mobility to Fire Mages, Time Warp will give raids yet another reason to be desired in a group setting, and oh my goodness, Wall of Fog! That's what sealed the deal for me. Not only will it allow Mages to distance themselves from enemies that are getting too close, it also sounds super cool to use.

Hell, after reading these changes, I might even make my Mage my main character, depending on how the Warrior class shapes up over the months leading up until Cataclsym. And to think, before reading this, I was thinking about not even coming back at all due to the rather lackluster Warrior and Druid changes. Good job, Blizzard!

Comment by Minipretzels

on 2010-04-10T03:05:01-05:00

Amazing.

Well, looks like no sleep for me when cata comes out. Go go 85!

Creative and fun looking ideas for mages. Can't wait!

Comment by Synz

on 2010-04-10T03:05:51-05:00

TY Blizzard. The life as mana thing is kinda odd, but the rest rocks.

Comment by Goldish

on 2010-04-10T03:29:50-05:00

Wow everyone is excited about these?

Frost and Fire Ward don't have a clear purpose? Are you kidding Blizz?

I don't think we got anything worse then everyone else, but I still see myself pressing Fireball and Scorch in Cata...